THE NAKED LUNCH (First UK paperback edition - third printing)

William Burroughs

ISBN 10: 0552079383 / ISBN 13: 9780552079389

Published by Corgi Books, London, 1969

About this Item

Third printing of the first UK paperback edition, published in 1969. The first UK paperback printing was published in 1968, and reprinted twice in 1969. The book was originally published in hardback in the UK by John Calder in 1964. ***Very good in strikingly illustrated card covers. The covers have some marks and creasing commensurate with age and handling (please see scans). Very light vertical reading crease and reading curve to the spine. Spine tight. Edges of covers lightly creased. Covers bright. Red lettering on the spine very slightly faded. Internally also very good with a neat ownership name on the inside front cover. No creases or tears. Paper stock tanned as usual. ***180mm x 111mm. 286 pages plus two page selection of titles from the publisher at the back of the book. ***'Mr. Burroughs joins a small body of writers who are willing to look at hell and report what they see.' (Anthony Burgess - The Guardian - quote from back cover) ***A nice bright copy of the third printing of the first UK paperback edition of this iconic cult title. Decent copies of this Corgi edition are now very hard to come by. ***For all our books, postage is charged at cost, allowing for packaging: any shipping rates indicated on ABE are an average only: we will reduce the P & P charge where appropriate - please contact us for postal rates for heavier books and sets etc.

Seller Inventory # PB422x

Bibliographic Details

• Title: THE NAKED LUNCH (First UK paperback edition - third printing)
• Publisher: Corgi Books, London
• Publication Date: 1969
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0552079383
• ISBN 13: 9780552079389
• Binding: Soft cover
• Edition: First UK Paperback Edition
• Printing: Third Printing
• Condition: Very Good
• Dust Jacket Condition: No Jacket, as Issued
• Seller catalogs:
  • First Editions
  • Collectable Paperbacks
  • Beat Writers & Counter Culture

About this title

Synopsis

The book is structured as a series of loosely connected vignettes. Burroughs stated that the chapters are intended to be read in any order. The reader follows the narration of junkie William Lee, who takes on various aliases, from the U.S. to Mexico, eventually to Tangier and the dreamlike Interzone.The vignettes are drawn from Burroughs' own experiences in these places and his addiction to drugs (heroin, morphine, and while in Tangier, majoun [a strong hashish confection] as well as a German opioid, brand name Eukodol, of which he wrote frequently).[source wiki}

Review

"He was," as Salon's Gary Kamyia notes, "20th-century drug culture's Poe, its Artaud, its Baudelaire. He was the prophet of the literature of pure experience, a phenomenologist of dread.... Burroughs had the scary genius to turn the junk wasteland into a parallel universe, one as thoroughly and obsessively rendered as Blake's."

Why has this homosexual ex-junkie, whose claim to fame rests entirely on one book--the hallucinogenic ravings of a heroin addict--so seized the collective imagination? Burroughs wrote Naked Lunch in a Tangier, Morocco, hotel room between 1954 and 1957. Allen Ginsberg and his beatnik cronies burst onto the scene, rescued the manuscript from the food-encrusted floor, and introduced some order to the pages. It was published in Paris in 1959 by the notorious Olympia Press and in the U.S. in 1962; the landmark obscenity trial that ensued served to end literary censorship in America.

Burroughs's literary experiment--the much-touted "cut-up" technique--mirrored the workings of a junkie's brain. But it was junk coupled with vision: Burroughs makes teeming amalgam of allegory, sci-fi, and non-linear narration, all wrapped in a blend of humor--slapstick, Swiftian, slang-infested humor. What is Naked Lunch about? People turn into blobs amidst the sort of evil that R. Crumb, in the decades to come, would inimitably flesh out with his dark and creepy cartoon images. Perhaps the most easily grasped part of Naked Lunch is its America-bashing, replete with slang and vitriol. Read it and see for yourself.